The use of speech recognition as an alternative method of inputting data to a computer is becoming more prevalent as speech recognition algorithms become ever more sophisticated and the processing capabilities of modern computers increases. Speech recognition systems are particularly attractive for people wishing to use computers who do not have keyboard skills.
There are several speech recognition systems currently on the market which can operate on a desktop computer. One such system is called DragonDictate (Trade Mark). This system allows a user to input both speech data and speech commands. The system can interface with many different applications to allow the recognised text output to be directly input into the application, e.g. a word processor. This system, however, suffers from the disadvantage that there is no audio recording of the dictation stored which can be replayed to aid the correction of the recognised text.
Another system which is currently on the market is IBM VoiceType version 1.1 (Trade Mark). In this system the recognised text from the speech recognition engine is input directly into a proprietary text processor and audio data is stored. This system, however, does not allow the recognised text to be directly input into any other application. The dictated text can only be input directly into the proprietary text processor provided whereupon at the end of dictation the text can be cut and pasted into other applications. Corrections to the dictated text in order to update the speech recogniser models can only be carried out within the text processor window. Text for recognition correction can be selected and the audio component corresponding to the text is played back to assist in the correction process. When all of the corrections have been completed, the text can either be saved or cut ready for pasting into another application. Either of these operations can cause the corrections made to be used to update the speech recogniser: the user has limited control over when the updates are made.
Not only is this system disadvantaged in not allowing direct dictation into applications, the system also does not allow the audio data to be stored in association with the text when the document is saved or when the text is cut and pasted into another application. Even a simple text processing operation, e.g. an insertion operation within a body of text, will prevent the playback of the audio component for that body of text including the change.